For good reason, we’ve focused lately on practical subjects for employers, including the Faster Labor Contracts Act, the warning signs of employee discontent, and a challenge to a 90-year election rule.
When was the last time we did a straight-up, old-fashioned strikewatch? There’s no time like the present to get one done:
The UAW’s messy Harvard strike grows
The Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW) is waging its second strike this year for “thousands” of graduate-student workers including teaching fellows and research assistants. The current strike is now in its second week with reports of disrupted events and testing as the union pushes for higher wages and increased benefits.
Over the weekend, union members protested outside an event featuring talk show host Stephen Colbert and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The union had asked them not to cross the picket line for the event, and before the evening ended, Colbert was evacuated after someone pulled a fire alarm. The union insisted via social media, “we have no knowledge of its cause.”
On Tuesday, the walkout grew to include another unit of non-tenure-track faculty and researchers who are striking for the first time.
The Chicago parking attendant strike ends
Teamsters Local 727 announced a ratified five-year contract following a four-day strike that ended just in time for the Bears-Bucs game this past weekend. The local claims to represent around 1,200 workers from 15 parking companies in the Chicago area. The union hasn’t released details on the new deal, although it claimed that the contract “will provide the largest benefit and wage increases ever achieved by the Union in the parking industry.”
The union’s vague terminology suggests that the agreement resembles the previous employer offer of “100% employer-paid health insurance” and “a 27 percent increase in wages and benefits over five years.” But that’s just a hunch, based on what recently happened with the Henry Ford Genesys Hospital strike, where the union put nurses on the picket line for a year, which led to a deal for what the employer had already implemented.
The Teamsters-Phillips 66 conflict ain’t over yet
A ratified seven-year deal now exists for around 400 workers at the largest East Coast refinery. Last month, the company locked out union members after they authorized a strike. But the union grumbling isn’t over yet. A return-to-work date is a sticking point after the refinery kept operations running with supervisors and engineers during the lockout.
One Steelworkers contract (almost) down, one to go
The United Steelworkers (USW) reportedly represents at least 20,000 workers combined at US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs. The latter company and USW have a tentative agreement with 18% base wage increases over four years and a ratification vote date still pending.
Meanwhile, the union and US Steel are in their third month of negotiations after workers’ most recent contract expired on Sept. 1. The parties did agree to a 30-day extension that expired on Oct. 1, and the union wants to include “so-called successorship language” that requires an existing contract to be honored if US Steel sells individual plants.
A little side note: This push for successorship language isn’t new to US Steel contracts, but this fight is happening months after the D.C. Circuit struck down the successor bar in Hospital Menonita de Guayama, Inc. v. NLRB, which means that a buyer could challenge the union’s majority status immediately following a sale. That case raises the stakes of USW’s demand, since a contract that a buyer assumes would normally trigger the contract bar. Interestingly, although Hospital Menonita de Guayama, Inc. made no determination on the contract bar, some legal commentators believe that it could be vulnerable to challenges as well. We’ll be watching for updates on that subject going forward.
